He improved on
this idea in following patents, and also proposed to derive the motive
electricity from an 'earth battery,' by burying plates of zinc and
copper in the ground. Gauss and Steinheil had priority in this device
which, owing to 'polarisation' of the plates and to drought, is not
reliable. Long afterwards Mr. Jones of Chester succeeded in regulating
timepieces from a standard astronomical clock by an improvement on the
method of Bain. On December 21, 1841, Bain, in conjunction with Lieut.
Thomas Wright, R.N., of Percival Street, Clerkenwell, patented means of
applying electricity to control railway engines by turning off the
steam, marking time, giving signals, and printing intelligence at
different places. He also proposed to utilise 'natural bodies of water'
for a return wire, but the earlier experimenters had done so,
particularly Steinheil in 1838. The most important idea in the patent
is, perhaps, his plan for inverting the needle telegraph of Ampere,
Wheatstone and others, and instead of making the signals by the
movements of a pivoted magnetic needle under the influence of an
electrified coil, obtaining them by suspending a movable coil traversed
by the current, between the poles of a fixed magnet, as in the later
siphon recorder of Sir William Thomson.
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